Perhaps Senator McGovern should not have deserted Tom Eagleton. Perhaps Senator McCain should stick by Governor Palin. But if he does soldier on with her by his side for a while, will he end up having to call another midget convention like the one that had to be cobbled together to nominate Sargent Shriver? That is hardly in his best interests.

So Palin -- perhaps -- ought to realize that McCain perhaps may find it hard and perhaps need to oust her in the end. Quit now before you embarrass yourself and hurt poor old John McCain, Garry Wills says.

Barring a dramatic reversal, Sarah Palin will formally become the Republican vice presidential nominee Wednesday night. Since Friday, when the pick was announced, news surrounding Palin has been almost uniformly negative....

Is that evidence of what a terrible idea it was to choose her or of how horrified the media are to see the McCain campaign electrified?

Here in St. Paul, talk of Palin has dominated the Republican convention—even more so than cable news—and by Monday night discussion among Republican operatives and reporters had turned to whether Palin would survive or become the first running mate since Thomas Eagleton in 1972 to leave a major-party ticket.

Oh, so the discussion among Republican operatives and reporters has turned to whether Palin is the new Eagleton? Why is that? Because the reporters are asking Republican operatives about it? What slithery language you have there, Joshua!

With reporters and opposition researchers crawling through Alaska...

Slithering....

... and with the McCain campaign having dispatched its own team of lawyers to re-vet Palin....

So now defending yourself in the face of attacks is "re-vetting"?

... Republicans are wondering what shoe might drop next.

The expression is "waiting for the other shoe to drop." People have 2 shoes. This is an expression to be used when one thing has happened in a context where you expect one more thing to happen. You live in an apartment and you hear, from upstairs, a shoe drop. You therefore conclude that your neighbor is taking off his shoes and rationally expect to hear the second shoe. There's no expression "what shoe might drop next." There's no rain of multiple shoes. There's no concept that if there's one shoe, there are probably a whole lot of other shoes out there.

Sorry, I got sidetracked. That just annoys me. The random intrusion of inapt shoe metaphors.

But yeah, so, obviously Green wants us to think that the Republicans upset about Sarah Palin. But who is pushing the Eagleton meme? Who wants her out?

You know, I remember the McGovern campaign. I was a big supporter of McGovern's, and I hated Nixon, as did all of my friends. And the scenario then was completely different from what you are seeing now. We were never excited about Eagleton in the first place. We just wanted McGovern to win. Eagleton didn't infuse new energy into the McGovern campaign or jazz up am important subset of voters. He was just some boring Senator that got slotted in. And then he brought nothing but trouble and distraction as the news came out that he'd been hospitalized for depression 3 times and had receive electroshock treatments. It wasn't just that there were a couple of old political controversies or a family member was less than perfect. We were getting significant new information about his brain, the brain that we might need to rely on to make presidential decisions. It was simply not acceptable, especially since he'd also withheld this information from McGovern, which showed some really poor character.

The Palin candidacy has virtually nothing in common with the Eagleton scenario, and the people who are saying it does are displaying their desperation. Obviously -- I'm not the first to say this -- if you want McCain to lose and you think she's so terrible, you should be happy to see Palin as the VP nominee. It will help defeat McCain.

I've seen the Eagleton meme all over the web, and for good reason: Palin's not qualified, and her nomination shows McCain's contempt for America.

But she'll never be dropped from the ticket. That would be far more damaging than keeping her on the ticket, despite her lack of qualification and crazy ideas. Some kind of major scandal would have to surface to force her off the ticket.

The Christianist base has their candidate, they are excited, and they'd burn the Republican Party to the ground if McCain dumped her.

Ann said, The expression is "waiting for the other shoe to drop." People have 2 shoes. This is an expression to be used when one thing has happened in a context where you expect one more thing to happen. You live in an apartment and you hear, from upstairs, a shoe drop. You therefore conclude that your neighbor is taking off his shoes and rationally expect to hear the second shoe. There's no expression "what shoe might drop next." There's no rain of multiple shoes. There's no concept that if there's one shoe, there are probably a whole lot of other shoes out there.ROFL.

There's no way a man as stubborn as John McCain will drop his candidate. He would find a way to make it work.

That's presuming that there'd be any reason to drop her, and I don't see any.

I think this is yet another example of pundits having to write about something, and seizing on something they know will be passed around the internet because one side will love it and one side with loathe it. Meanwhile, here in the middle, one watches and waits for real information.

NPR coverage last night was shameless. I worked late and missed all the speeches live. Driving home, I tuned into some of the after-banter. One commentor sneered at Thompson's "fielddressing a moose" comment: "yeah like that's a qualification for VP"

Interesting how none of the same questions were raised about Edwards in '04. Or for that matter about Obama this time around. Both of 'em first-term senators with absolutely zero executive experience of any sort.

The same media who spiked stories on Edwards' affair while he was in consideration for VP again? Ordinary Americans are figuring it out, as the old-line media's viewership and circulation numbers are starting to show.

Fact is, conservatives so hate government (but for the right reasons) that proximity to secessionists gives them more cred. I mean, really, what red-blooded conservative hasn't fantasized about dissolving the US government? This just makes the Palins more real. More like the rest of the Republican party base.

This is insane. All of the controversy of the past few days has been generated by a bunch of self-important journalists caught with their knickers down. They couldn't imagine McCain picking Palin so they didn't vet her. And if they didn't, McCain couldn't possibly have done so. Time will tell how well Palin does on the campaign trail, but she'll still be on the ticket in November and the reporters will still be demanding that she be dropped from the ticket.

I cannot begin to tell you how angry this makes me. I'm so angry I'm loosing all sense of decency. I demand the Obama take a drug test to prove he is no longer using coke. I insist, no man of 47 can be that thin without using that terrific weight control drug, cocaine. And if he rufuses? Let's send DTL in for a pubic hair.

Re Eagleton: he was treat for depression with electro-shock therapy, a standard medical protocol at the time, and also treated with meds. He was long through his illness.

The republicans then were shameless in their assault on a man with previous depression. Says a lot about mental illness was viewed in that day.

And McGovern got into trouble because he didnt make a decision about what to do while Eagleton twisted in the wind. And it wasnt the eagleton thing that made McGovern lose every state but MA. He could have put Mother Theresa on the ticket and still lost.

I learned last night that Governor Palin is the Chair of the Interstate Oil and Gas Commission. A commission made up of numerious states and Candian provinces. One of the chief projects that Governor Palin has been working on is the Alaska gas pipeline. The largest capital project ever undertaken in North American history.

Does it occur to Wills that Palin will give a decent speech and start campaigning, and the uniformly negative news will turn to dust in the light of the candidate's actual presentation?

Instead of the Eagleton scenario, Democrats might want to consider the George W. Bush scenario. Remember how the guy was an inarticulate, inexperienced dunce that Al Gore was going to debate off the floor?

Please recall the media and Obama camp tried this tactic with Hillary when she lost Iowa (or was it super tuesday--its all a blur). This is a page right out of the Rove oops Obama play book. Start the media buzz and hope it spooks the candidate--didnt spook Hillary at all and its damn sure not going to spook McCain or Palin. Obama and his fellating media are something else.

Garry Wills is obviously a very caring man to be so concerned with Governor Palin's emotional well-being. I am certain he would be so sensitive if it was a male candidate.

Or not.

Granted, he'd likely be attacking a male with the exact same credentials as Palin, but there is little chance he would be making the case that she should drop out to protect her from the abuse coming her way from, well, people like him.

One of the fascinating things about all this is the expectations game. Normally, the smart thing to do is to drive expectations down so that it becomes easier to exceed the expectations and easier to exceed them by a substantial margin. In this case, the left seems dog-determined to drive the expectations to the floor before Palin gets on the stage. It isn't the approach I would have taken, but I guess that might be part of why I am not a man of the left.

Eagleton had a psychotic lesion. Palin is the mother of a pregnant teen-ager. There is no parallel here except in the utterly warped space time continuum of Democrats...Obama was born out of wedlock to a teen age mother. If this says something important about Palin, what does it say about Obama's mother....There is something about Palin that invites sympathy. She is just about to get on the balance beam and attempt to do sequential back flips with a smile. I do not know if she will land on her ass or finish with an exuberant smile, but I'm hoping for the best. And I know that the Democrats will mock the smallest bobble, and the worst of them will try to kick the beam from under her...I do not share Palin's views on many issues, and she is at least as under qualified as Obama. But everything I know about human nature assures me that she is a good person. The Democratic attempt to slime her for the ordinary stutter steps that one makes in the course of negotiatiing life are bigoted and ugly.

Bullwinkle desperately tried to rally the cartoon community agianst this canabilistic ghoul who has been selected as the vice presidential canidate. He had enough trouble trying to convince them that he was a gay Republican cartoon character. Everyone knew that a moose or a Republican couldn’t be gay. Now a bear, sure. Everybody had their doubts about Yogi living in the forest with his teenage “ward” Boo Boo. And bear’s even have their own gay clubs in San Fransico. So no one believed Bullwinkle. I mean they hated Pallin for their own reasons. She reminded them of where they came from, the people they left behind. But moose stew. Who gives a shit.(Jay Ward and Alex Anderson, Rocky and Bullwinkle, E True Hollywood Story)

They think that if they humiliate her and torture her and her family that Sarah Palin will meekly step aside and go back to her "place". How dare she be an accomplished wife, mother and career woman who isn't toeing the liberal agenda and pro-abortion line!!! Having stepped away from the stereotype allotted to conservative women only, she must be slapped back into place. She should stay home with her children...only liberal women are allowed to have careers and families. Not!!

As a woman, who has also stepped over that line, working in a "man's" occupation, I can tell you that this tactic is not going to work. All it will do is put more iron in her spine and determination to smack down her detractors.

My mother told me and I have conveyed this on to my daughter as well. Success is the best revenge.. The true feminists, unlike the sour partisan hacks at NOW, are on your side. The women who are quitely raising families, making ends meet and working at the local Bank, working at Wal Mart, driving school buses, operating their hair salons, managing the corner hardware store... we have your back.

Do NOT back down. Don't let the soulless ghouls win. Go Sarah. You go girl!!

Well, she did. Trinity United Church. They were anti-American and wished to segregate blacks and whites.

And if Palin were really such a horrible choice, then you would think that those opposed to the McCain ticket would applaud the selection knowing that it would lead to their victory.

Democrats wanted to run against McCain because they thought they could beat him since many conservatives would sit out the election. Now those people are coming back into the fold, and they see that their dream of easy victory is slipping away.

Where was the outrage over Edwards' experience. Oh, and his family was "off limits."

Patca is right. That interview and others I have seen with CNBC's Kudlow for example - the is awesome. Can't imagine Obama being as good in a one on one.

Kudlow has been talking about her for months as were the pundits on his political show Sat mornings which is why I was so excited by her. Unlike Maureen Dowd and Sally Quinn for whom she is not their kind of feminist, I have seen her before and always impressed.

Media is pissed because they didn't vet her (it's all about them). Libs in my office are foaming at the mouth because she is good, so they are are throwing mud and lying (she wasn't a member of a secessionist group!). They are SCARED.

And she wasn't picked for their benefit, but McCain's. And she is an asset. They can scream she's a failure all they want to because they weren't going to vote for McCain anyway.

What I don't get about this whole Eagleton meme is what exactly have we learnt since she was introduced that is so beyond the pale that the only sensible thing would be to drop her from the ticket? I mean there are only 2 things we have learnt definitively since her introduction: 1.) Her daughter is pregnant and 2.) Her husband was registered as a third party member and is now an independent.

Small potatoes so far isn't it? I mean it's not like she was found to have been a serial killer or KKK grand wizard or something else that would reflect well upon McCain if he washed his hands of her.

Whatever. The whole thing is being driven by people who will never vote for McCain anyway. I'm sure he's not really worried about losing Garry Willis as a supporter.

Verso, your lack of imagination is revealed in your use of the word "Christianists." It's not your vocabulary, but rather something you picked up on another web site that appealed to you. You've repeated the term an obnoxiously lot of times and in the process added 0 to the discussion save for that same corrupted mp3 file. From what I can see, everything you've written so far follows from that original absence of originality.

There's simply no point in reading another word from [http://www.blogger.com/profile/02540272057882328393] It's 100% of the same mold. You're officially vanished on my laptop's screen. :-(

"So Palin -- perhaps -- ought to realize that McCain perhaps may find it hard and perhaps need to oust her in the end. Quit now before you embarrass yourself and hurt poor old John McCain, Garry Wills says."

Perhaps Garry Wills says this because he's given about $3,000 to the Obama campaign and doesn't want to waste the investment.

Neither Eagleton nor Palin was thoroughly vetted. That's the analogy, and it seems apt to me.

This is inapt. I've read a lot of stories about this, and the idea that Palin wasn't vetted is never attributed to a McCain campaign official. It is attributed only to the people to whom the nomination came as a surprise -- especially in the press. The McCain campaign has said very clearly that a) she was vetted thoroughly and b) everything that's come out, they knew about already.

Eagleton got roughly the same vetting as candidates got in those days decades ago. He was asked a few questions and expected to answer truthfully, given the stakes. In those days, it was considered surprising if a candidate for major office would lie under those circumstances, which is what he did.

Someone else claims the Republicans made a big issue of Eagleton's past, and that's what drove him from the race. Utter bullshit. It was Democratic insiders, many of whom would go on to support Nixon, who were outraged, and they were more outraged that he would lie. They anticipated his mental illness might turn off voters, and thus he was under an obligation to disclose it. It struck them, correctly, as an act of supreme selfishness on his part.

Get your history right, people. There is no analogy whatsoever here between Eagleton and Palin. To my knowledge Palin has not been accused by anyone of lying.

I'm like Ann in this. I don't know if the Palin nomination is going to help McCain convince me to vote for him. It might scare me off, frankly. But the unfairness, dishonesty and condescending attitudes being demonstrated by her critics in the media and on the leftosphere is sickening.

It's fairly obvious that Palin was vetted early in the process (remember McCain won enough delegates to clinch early in the cycle, so he had lots of time to pick a VP), but was revetted (incrementally vetted?) right before she was named his candidate.

Realize that no candidate is completely free from baggage. Mrs. Palin is good enough to be VP, even if she isn't ready for sainthood.

I'm spamming this one a little bit, but it is especially appropriate for this thread:

Where is it written that only senators are qualified to become President?... Or where is it written that mere representatives aren’t qualified, like Geraldine Ferraro of Queens?... Where is it written that governors and mayors, like Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco, are too local, too provincial?... Presidential candidates have always chosen their running mates for reasons of practical demography, not idealized democracy…. What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen.... Why shouldn’t a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?... [T]he indispensable credential for a Woman Who [sic] is the same as for a Man Who [sic] – one who helps the ticket.

Who wrote this? The New York Times editorial board did, that's who. Only it was 1984. I guess they're more mature now. (link)

I wish I could buy verso a full page ad in the NYT. Every time they use that bigoted word "Christianist", I make sure to bookmark the post, so I can point out other places what bigots Obama's followers can be.

What really bothers you is that she is an "uppity Christianist", the worst kind.

Palin is polling as more popular than McCain or the chosen one. This after being attached like no other candidate in memory. Palin solidified and electrified the Republican base and erased Obama's national lead in one week. She is the real deal. No amount of muck dragging in Alaska is going to stop her.

Win or lose this election, she will be the Republican nominee in 2012. If she loses, after four years of the Chosen One, 2012 will make 1980 look like a close election.

"There has to be some reason that the Democrats/Angry Left and the MSM want Sarah Palin to go so badly. I wonder what it is?"

I'd say the strategy is that they want to plant the seed of doubt into undecided voters' minds. By going on about whether she should be removed from the ticket, they're trying to control the message, which is (according to them) McCain made a stupid pick. Whether or not she is removed (and I don't think she will be), I'm willing to bet that Palin will end up being stuck with the description "controversial VP nominee".

At the same time, which I hate to admit, I remember as well, the New York Times was our national paper of record. Hell, Robert Redford ran to the NYT in "Three Days of the Condor", and we all said,"Oooh, those CIA bad guys are gonna get it now". Today, let's face it, not so much. It's more like,"Run to the Times with a dangerous truth to power story?", screw that, post it to the web, where it can never die.

I've actually read some of Wills's history books. They're not good, but they're not totally worthless. But as a commentator on the contemporary American scene, he is totally worthless. Eagleton scenario? Palin ain't no Eagleton, and McCain ain't no McGovern.

Gov. Palin has actually managed to have a career - in politics, no less - and a family, too. A big family. But, what's worse, she's not a liberal or a professional whiner, and she's not riding anyone's coattails. She's nobody's chattel, and doesn't need to have an abortion to prove it.

This isn't just a brilliant pick by McCain, it's a seismic shift in American politics. The Democrats have been standing still while the Republicans have left them in the dust with one nomination. This is so regardless of who wins the election.

I will give this to Team Obama: They have a very efficient machine to get the meme of the day out. You see the same words in the same order at almost the same time crossing different media - the NYT, diaries on Kos, trolls on conservative sites, and every television network. I've never seen anything that fast and efficient.

It's the first thing that makes me think Obama may actually be competent. But more likely it's somebody on his staff. If I were in politics I'd figure out who that person is and hire him/her next election cycle.

For those who are interested, the full quote is:"Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult."It is from Charlotte Whitton, who was first elected as Mayor of Ottawa in 1951.Her Wiki entry is quite good; the word 'feminist' is used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Whitton